Friday, March 11, 2011

Finally, proof that gods exist! Maybe.

A reader sent me this link, to a page called Proof That God Exists.  That sounds promising, doesn't it?  Let's dig in!

Despite the big promises that the page's title makes, it is really just another transcendental argument for the existence of god(s).  It takes you through the existence of certain laws, for example, the laws of logic, then asserts, with no evidence, that this means that at least one god exists.  The author even goes one step further, and makes what I consider to be the most dishonest *cough* mistake that a theist can make.  I have several other problems with the website, as you might imagine.

I've written before about most of the problems the website has, so rather than repeating myself here, I'm mostly going to direct you to the previous posts.

1.  This is yet another religious hand-waving argument for the existence of gods.  They want you to think about the problem in just the right way such that you can "logic gods into existence".  I've covered the transcendental argument before with this post, but I think it's far more important to read this post, which is about why I would not consider any "god proof" that involves merely talking and waving your hands.  It's one of my favourite posts that I've written on this site, even though it is far from the most popular.

2.  Even though the argument doesn't require it, the site makes a big deal about this concept of absolute morality.  It wants you to admit that there is a cosmically-declared morality and that morality is not a construct of people or societies.  I disagree with this idea, but you have to click that you believe in absolute morality if you want to get to the end of the argument and see the grand finale.  I've posted before about how objective/absolute morality cannot be supported by reality.  I've also written before about an article by the well-known Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, who when he needed to prove absolute morality existed to finish off a proof, merely offered, "And could anything be more obvious than that objective moral values do exist?"

3.  If you progress further into the site, you get to this message:

"To reach this page you had to acknowledge that immaterial, universal, unchanging laws of logic, mathematics, science, and absolute morality exist. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws are necessary for rational thinking to be possible. Universal, immaterial, unchanging laws cannot be accounted for if the universe was random or only material in nature.

The Bible teaches us that there are 2 types of people in this world, those who profess the truth of god's existence and those who suppress the truth of god's existence. The options of 'seeking' god, or not believing in god are unavailable. The Bible never attempts to prove the existence of god as it declares that the existence of god is so obvious that we are without excuse for not believing in him.

(Bible verse deleted)

The god of Christianity is the necessary starting point to make sense of universal, abstract, invariant laws by the impossibility of the contrary. These laws are necessary to prove ANYTHING. Therefore the proof that god exists is that without him you couldn't prove anything.

Note that the proof does not say that professed unbelievers do not prove things. The argument is that you must borrow from the Christian worldview, and a god who makes universal, immaterial, unchanging laws possible in order to prove anything.

This type of logical proof deals with ‘transcendentals’ or ‘necessary starting points,’ and the proof is called a ‘transcendental proof.’ Any contrary view to the god of Christianity being the necessary starting point for rationality is reduced to absurdity. You have to assume god in order to argue against him. Only the Christian worldview can logically support rationality."

So there you have it!  Because I believe I have proven that a god must exist, it is therefore my particular god, and any belief that it could be considered any other god is pure absurdity!

This is what I believe to be the dirtiest, most dishonest tactic and most serious logical failure that any religious believer can use in an argument about their religion.  The no-proof-required assertion that the god we are discussing is my god, end of story.  It's no surprise that this person has used it.  I've written about this before, here.

This author of the website has failed miserably, and I say to him to eat shit and die for his dishonesty at the end.